56. Kai
Kai
“So, I think we’ve done some really good work in the last few weeks. What I want to talk about now is the damage of the breakup. How it affected each of you when you weren’t together. Okay?” Magdalena asks in her gentle, calm, reassuring tone.
Kendall nods, the curls of her bun bouncing against her head but I can tell she’s nervous. I don’t know if she’s aware that her hands are shaking. I take one of them in mine and say her name. She locks eyes with me and I see a flicker of something that I can’t name cross her face.
Pain? Guilt? Regret?
“It’s okay,” I tell her. No matter what happens, we are going to be okay. “I can go first,” I say. “I was devastated. Fucking shattered when we broke up. I was so confused about what had happened or what I did. And I was just so angry with her.”
“Kendall, how does that make you feel? What Kai just said?” she prods.
“I feel terrible. Like a really terrible fucking person. The last thing I wanted was to hurt him. And he had every right to be angry with me. I was angry with myself,” she admits.
“What exactly were you angry at yourself for?” she wonders. Kendall wipes a tear starting to slide down her gorgeous bronze face and Magdalena hands her the tissue box.
“For making the wrong decisions out of fear and not being able to stand by them,” Kendall replies.
“Okay. And Kai, what did your life look like when you broke up? How did you deal with that?” she asks, turning her head to me.
“Well, at first, I tried calling her, texting her, writing her letters. But when those went unanswered, I resorted to drinking, fighting, sleeping around. Anything I could to numb the pain. Looking back, I think I was very depressed and didn’t know how to handle that exactly.”
“Hmm,” Magdalena murmurs. “And did you blame Kendall for this behavior, these choices?” I know Kendall already blames herself for so much. I don’t want her to bear this burden too. I swallow and answer hesitantly.
“Yeah, I did.”
“Do you still?”
God, this is…I don’t even have words for what it feels like. Peeling back the layers of skin on a barely healed wound. Ripping down a decades’ old house that once seemed sturdy to expose the rot, necrosis, and mold festering underneath.
“No, I don’t. Every decision I made back then was overshadowed with intense pain I didn’t know how to quiet.
But I had agency. I was an adult. I had freedom to make decisions.
But I do still get upset about the way it was handled.
It always felt unresolved. She just kind of disappeared.
No closure. Nothing. That was the worst. The not knowing, the hope.
” Because the hope for me back then was dangerous.
“Kendall, what about you? Did you feel like you had closure back then?”
“I mean, there wasn’t really a way to have closure when I just up and left. I stopped communicating with him and we broke up under false pretenses. I told Kai it was a temporary break not a breakup. So, of course things were always left unsaid. Unfinished,” Kendall explains.
“And how do they feel now? Are there things that still need closure that still feel unresolved?” she asks, glancing between the both of us.
“I don’t think we’d be here if we didn’t need closure or answers,” Kendall says truthfully. I nod in agreement while smoothing my thumb over her fingers.
“Okay. Fair enough.” Magdalena smiles. “Kendall, how did the breakup impact you?”
“That’s a difficult question to answer,” she replies quietly.
“I was young and pregnant and confused. I felt so fucking alone. And I knew it was my own fault. But while I was pregnant, it was easy to focus just on being pregnant. After Akio was born, it got harder. I missed Kai a lot and trying to be a mom without him amplified those feelings. I felt like a piece of me had died. Shortly after I brought him home from the hospital, I started to panic. I knew I had made a mistake leaving Kai and I knew I couldn’t do this without him.
I also just didn’t feel ready to be a parent.
I was ill-prepared. I felt like I was failing Akio, failing myself. Everyone.”
She pauses for a few seconds trying to get a handle on her emotions.
She tucks a few curls behind her ear. “A few weeks after he was born, I was lying down in my bed trying to get a few seconds of rest while Akio was sleeping. I just needed a fucking break from his screeching, bloodcurdling wails,” she glances down at her hands while she recounts this.
I don’t need to be looking at her to know how guilty and ashamed she feels; the pain rolls off her in waves.
She takes a deep breath and carries on shakily.
“From him needing so much of me all the time. Just a few moments of silence and relief. And I realized I didn’t want to get out of bed again.
I didn’t want to do anything. And I didn’t for three days.
I didn’t eat, I didn’t shower, I didn't rock or hold or feed Akio. I didn’t comfort him when he cried, or let him know I was there.
I just slept. I fucking failed him. And that’s when I knew something was wrong. ”